After months of defending Torontonians in the pages of his digital comic book, the tales of Toronto’s mysterious masked defender has officially hit store shelves.

Created by Gregg Taylor and illustrated by Dean Kotz, Mask of the Red Panda centresaround August Fenwick, a billionaire who brings his own brand of justice to depression-era Toronto as the Red Panda.

Presented in the classic pulp fiction style of the 1930s and 1940s, Fenwick fights crime in a suit and hat with a red domino mask alongside his love-stricken driver turned sidekick Katya “Kit” Baxter, known better by her crime-fighting alias The Flying Squirrel.

Between their mastery of hand-to-hand combat and a variety of gadgets, the duo, more commonly referred to as The Terrific Twosome of Toronto, dedicate their time towards keeping the city safe from gangsters, gunmen and, of course, crazed super villains, all of whom are hell bent on exploiting the disaster-stricken people of Canada’s largest city.

“As it was common in heroes in the period (Fenwick) was the wealthy man who played the fool while he was trying to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves,” said Taylor. “(At the time, people) didn’t think in terms of a man with powers, they thought in terms of a man with wealth, a man with means who would use his power instead of to exploit people (but) to save them.”

Originally published online via MonkeyBrain Comics, Mask of the Red Panda was acquired by California-based IDW Publishing in December.

Consisting of the series’ first four digital comics, it was released earlier this month in a limited print run across both the United States and Canada.

“It’s a great type of noir approach. We like the style, we like the creative and it felt like it would be a great addition to our trade line,” said Jeff Webber, IDW’s director of ePublishing. “I don’t think it’s so locked into being a Canadian story specifically but I think it’ll have a broad audience in the U.S. as well.”

For Taylor, a 42-year-old Torontonian who now lives in Hamilton, setting the Red Panda’s adventures during the Depression was more than just an ode to the classic pulp heroes he read growing up — such as Walter B. Gibson’s The Shadow or Will Eisner’s The Spirit — but to also serve as a reminder of a forgotten part of our history.

“It’s very easy for us to forget how dark and desperate this period was and when you read popular fiction of that period it’s clear that everyone knew someone who had been destroyed by the collapse of the economy,” said Taylor. “[The heroes of this time] were invented because they were needed.

“It becomes something more than these spandex heroes who spend their time fighting each other when you think of it as something pop culture created because people who were consuming it needed it.”

Before becoming an internationally distributed comic, The Red Panda’s adventures began as a one-off radio drama for Taylor’s online Decoder Ring Theatre in 2005. However, after the surprising success of its initial run, Taylor, along with a tight-knit cast of voice actors, continued to put out new episodes on a regular basis.

Now, nine years and 102 episodes later, the Red Panda Adventures is Decoder Ring Theatre’s marquee franchise. Single episodes receive anywhere from 10,000 to 12,000 downloads within the month between new releases, Taylor says.

In addition to being a comic and a radio drama, Taylor has also written a handful of novels based on The Red Panda’s adventures.

“The good thing about the comic’s release is that it brought new people in who then discover what we’ve been doing with the radio show,” said Taylor. “Primarily each episode is a self-contained adventure story but if you stick with it there’s relationships that develop and there’s this huge extended cast that you get to know.”

Taylor, whose love for the Golden Age of American radio was his inspiration behind creating the program, hopes that his radio series will appeal to both veteran fans of the genre and new fans who have tuned into to a radio drama.

“Every formula and every genre that we know on TV today was invented and developed in just a handful of years and then technology outstripped it,” said Taylor.

As for the future of Toronto’s masked protector, Taylor says that he is open to further exploring the Red Panda’s world through different media.

“I would love to do something animated,” he said. “I would adore taking these characters into that kind of different energy and have them meet new people in different ways.”

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